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Akira Rabelais

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Akira Rabelais, “CXVI” (Boomkat Editions, 2019)

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It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize it, but Akira Rabelais has quietly been one of the most unique and intriguing figures in experimental music for the last couple of decades, blurring the lines between collage, modern composition, ambient music, and conceptual art with each release. This latest album has apparently been a labor of love for years, drawing contributions from an eclectic array of collaborators including Harold Budd, Ben Frost, Kassel Jaeger, Stephan Mathieu, Geir Jenssen, and a pair of French photographers. Admittedly, a bevy of talented participants is not always an infallible recipe for a great album, but it was this time, as CXVI resembles a temporally dislocated and hallucinatory mélange of This Mortal Coil, Erik Satie, and a 19th century Parisian opium den.

The theme of Rabelais’s intended magnum opus is unquestionably a Romantic one, as both the album title and the names of the individual songs allude to Shakespeare’s 116 sonnet. Clarifying that further, the album’s accompanying text is a lengthy etymology of the word “love.” That subject has historically been quite fertile ground for inspiration and the four lengthy movements of CXVI appropriately have the scope and feel of a sprawling, immersive epic. 

The vaporous structure of the album makes it a very elusive and deliciously un-graspable piece of art though. That is especially true of the opening “which alters when it alteration finds,” which opens with a gentle, submerged piano motif in a sea of roiling hiss and wobbly distorted tones. Eventually, however, all of the noise abruptly gives way to reveal a simple and tenderly melancholy piano interlude from Budd. As it progresses, however, the spaces between the notes increases and the focus shifts to their lingering, ghostly afterimages. That evanescent and subtly phantasmagoric approach to composition is the one clear thread that runs throughout the entire album, as each piece is roughly twenty minutes long and is defined by a single strong motif that pierces through the languorous haze of spectral abstraction. Those oft-lovely windows of clarity are bridged together by surreal passages of near-silence, murkily faint strings, and frayed, rumbling drones, however, which dissolves any real sense of these songs beginning or ending.Instead, CXVI unfolds like a fever dream that occasionally coheres into passages of vivid, gorgeous lucidity.

As much as I enjoy Harold Budd, the most memorable and striking moments on the album tend to be those involving Rabelais’ revolving cast of unusual vocalists. The album’s centerpiece is arguably “star to every wandring worth’s unknown,” in which Mélanie Skriabine sensuously reads Max Ernst’s “La Femme 100 tétes” in French over a barely-there haze of shimmering, undulating tones from Rabelais and Kassel Jaeger. Unlike the other pieces on the album, it holds together in a relatively coherent and recognizable structure from start to finish, simply because Skriabine’s voice never goes away. Despite that, however, it is probably the most reality-dissolving passage of otherworldly beauty on the album, blurring together floating dissonance, seductive ASMR, and snatches of piano and violin melodies that feel like they are wafting in from fin de siécle Vienna.

The following “within bending sickle’s compass come,” on the other hand, initially resembles a swooningly Romantic and pitch-perfect reincarnation of classic This Mortal Coil (courtesy of Heligoland’s Karen Vogt), but that mirage quickly dissipates into an eerily glimmering and ghostly vapor trail of processed guitar. Notably, the piece was originally composed for one of Cedrick Eymenier’s video works, but it feels quite at home here and adds beautifully to album’s half-haunted/half-delirious mood. Following a palette-cleansing crescendo of churning, blown-out synth noise, the closing “if error and upon me proved” returns to ASMR territory with a whispered, confessional-sounding monologue from Bogdan Smith. It admittedly creeps dangerously close to sounding exactly like Félicia Atkinson’s recent work, but it is quite an effective and intimate channeling of that aesthetic nonetheless.

The album ends on quite a sublime, enigmatic, and rapturously beautiful note, however, as “an ancient, arcane air inscribed to 78rpm vinyl by Stephan Mathieu” gradually replaces Smith’s voice for a final coda that sounds like a duet between a lovelorn angel and an antique music box. It is a perfect conclusion to a near-perfect album, as my only critique is that Rabelais has an occasional weakness for openly derivative stylistic touches (not unlike David Lynch’s attempt to replicate “Song to the Siren” via Julee Cruise, actually).

I genuinely do not mind that particular proclivity in Rabelais’ case, however, as he occupies a curious kind of gray area as an artist. In fact, he is kind of analogous to Andy Warhol in a weird way: Warhol’s actual skill as a painter was fairly irrelevant, as his true “art” was his overarching vision and his genius for recontextualizing the recognizable. Similarly, Rabelais’ talents as a composer are beside the point as well, as his own genius lies in painstakingly threading together all of his various, wide-ranging fascinations (ASMR, Ernst, photography, language, Shakespeare, French accents, the crackle of vinyl, etc.) into bold and coherent new work filled with beauty, mystery, and wonder. Aside from perhaps Spellewauerynsherde, Rabelais has never done that better than he has with CXVI.

Samples can be found here.
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Akira Rabelais, “Spellewauerynsherde” (Samadhisound (2004)/Boomkat Editions (2017))

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This singular album was originally released back in 2004 on David Sylvian’s Samadhisound label, but Boomkat has just issued it on vinyl for the first time (along with quite a lot of accompanying praise about its status as an absolute masterpiece). As curmudgeonly as I am, I have to agree—while the epic centerpiece of Spellewauerynsherde could probably benefit from somewhat sharper execution, these seven pieces cumulatively amount to quite a quietly staggering whole. 

Rapturous beauty aside, Spellewauerynsherde is also quite a radical and inventive bit of sound art, as it was crafted entirely from feeding medieval choral music in Rabelais’ self-designed Argeïphontes Lyre software, which seems to work by mutating, disintegrating, and recombining the source material. Naturally, the sublime and unusual source material itself deserves a healthy amount of the credit for this album’s timeless beauty, but Rabelais’ transformative magic has unquestionably elevated it into something considerably more otherworldly and mysterious.

For some reason, I always thought Akira Rabelais was European, but it turns out at that he is actually a Texan currently based in California with quite an intriguing talent for cultivating enigmas and cryptic puzzles (his multi-lingual website is an especially impressive riddle). Understanding that facet of his persona is often quite crucial for getting to the true depth of his work, particularly in the case of this album and its unwieldy Middle English-style song titles. 

For one, they seem to have no direct relation to the titles of the cannibalized choral pieces that provide the grist for Spellewauerynsherde, which were apparently forgotten recordings of an a capella Icelandic folk music ensemble made in the ’60s and early ’70s (found in a closet in Valencia, CA, naturally). More intriguingly, they mostly reference significant (and sometimes bitterly ironic) events that shaped humankind’s perception of God and heaven, such as the excommunication of John Wycliffe (who first translated the New Testament to English) or the English publication date of The Lives of Saints. 

Other titles reference our increasing understanding of the vastness of the universe or early masterpieces of English poetry (Rabelais, being a true polymath, is also a poet himself). It is not so much the idea of God that fascinates Rabelais, however, so much as it is the struggle to express the ineffable. Naturally, trying to convey such elusive beauty and mystery through a composition is exactly the sort of impossible task that can consume (and destroy) a life, so Rabelais has wisely taken himself out of the equation as much as possible. Spellewauerynsherde is like a once-majestic ancient church that has become a beautiful ruin from the tireless artistry of erosion and untended greenery, as Rabelais’ software eviscerates the human component to extract its ghostly residue.

The degree of that transformation varies quite a bit from song to song, however, which is part of what makes Spellewauerynsherde such a fascinating album. On the opening homage to John Wycliffe, the gorgeous female vocals sound fairly straightforward, but they texturally resemble a distant radio transmission heard over a quiet spectral drone. Another bit of subtle magic is that the unsuspecting vocalist starts overlapping herself at various points, resulting in a strange and unpredictable duet of sorts. 

The following John Gower-themed piece is similarly dreamlike and angelic, but sounds less like a radio transmission and more like two small choirs performing at opposite ends of a vast and reverberant cathedral. I would probably be perfectly fine with an entire album that continued in the rough vein of those first two pieces, but Rabelais starts to descend into stranger and more abstract territory with the next pair of pieces. 

The first, “1440,” is definitely the more bizarre of the two, dramatically slowing down the vocals into an eerie and corroded-sounding lament that sounds like it is bleeding into our world from the spirit one. It sounds far more like an ominous, creeping fog than an Icelandic folk singer, which is quite a bit of transformational dark magic. The album’s Lives of the Saints-themed centerpiece (“1483”), however, goes in quite a different direction, unfolding as a 21-minute epic of hazy and floating drone drift concealing fleeting snatches of lovely melodies that struggle to peek through the swirling mists. I have conflicting feelings about it, as I would not have minded if its lushly amorphous and undulating heaven expanded to consume the entire album, yet it also seems like a long and unexpected lull in the album’s momentum due to its contextual relation to the more structured, melodic fare around it. It feels like a great album unexpectedly dissolved into a different one.

I suspect that extended interlude was a thoughtful and deliberate choice though, as Rabelais saved some of his finest work for the end of the album and clearing some space to ensure that it made a maximum impact makes a lot of sequencing sense (though 21 minutes was still probably a bit excessive). In any case, “Gorgeous Curves” is a feast of swooping, soulful and intertwining Siren-esque vocals that seem to dance and weave through an undulating mist. There is even more going on than just that though, as the vocals also seem to drift in and out of focus and sometimes seem to lock into a stuttering loop for certain words. It is quite a dynamic tour de force all around. 

The closing homage to John Milton (“1671”) is also a stunner, but one which removes almost all conspicuous evidence of artifice to leave just a naked and perfect vocal melody over an understated and vaporous bed of heavenly drones and what sounds like wind blowing across a lonely, remote microphone. Not far into the piece, the singing dissipates altogether to leave only the gentle breathe of the wind and the elusive, whispy drift of the sublime underlying drones. 

That lingering fade into silence is the perfect come-down after Spellewauerynsherde‘s glimpse into the divine and the purest distillation of Rabelais’ iconoclastic brilliance on the album: the other six songs are certainly an integral and entrancing part of the journey, but the culmination is the almost complete negation of the artist and his ego. With Spellewauerynsherde, Akira Rabelais is less of a composer than he is a humble and thoughtful facilitator, taking something already timeless, sincere, and beautiful and devising an organic and ingenious means of purging it of its last few earthbound touches.

Listen here.

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Kassel Jaeger/Stephen Mathieu/Akira Rabelais, “Zauberberg” (Shelter Press, 2016)

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In recent years, Shelter Press has carved out an unusual niche for itself through a series of highly conceptual and ambitiously esoteric releases that blur the boundaries between various forms of art. One of their more intriguing projects as of late is this one, in which a trio of composers attempts to recreate the aura of Thomas Mann’s 1924 masterwork The Magic Mountain (even going so far as to do some field recording in Swiss Alps where the novel was set). The end result is quite a pleasant and subtly phantasmagoric reverie, as the composers’ individual voices are subsumed by a beguiling series of crackling classical music snippets, ominous drones, and ambient outdoor sounds.

It has been more than a decade since I last read The Magic Mountain, so any attempt on my part to try to link Zauberberg to any specific passages would be hopelessly doomed. Thankfully, I do not think that there are many links to be found anyway, as the composers seem to have very much gone for abstract mood and feel rather than anything concrete or literal. The foundation of that aesthetic here seems to be recurring interludes of blurred, reverberant classical music snatches, which is both temporally appropriate and very effective at evoking the beauty, sadness, mystery, and isolation of a sanatorium nestled in the mountains. 

Curiously, however, none of the participants’ signature aesthetics surface much at all, which I suppose makes this a successful collaboration in at least one way. I am not particularly familiar with Rabelais’ previous work, regrettably, but the only conspicuous shades of Jaeger and Mathieu throughout Zauberberg are occasional intrusions of ominous electronic throbs and drones. Those touches create an interesting tension with the rest of the album, as it see-saws back and forth between crackling, pulsing abstract menace and lively, organic sounds like chirping birds and opera records. In many superficial ways, Zauberberg is a lot like a Caretaker album with some birds and pleasantly babbling brooks thrown in.

Compositionally, however, Zauberberg is very much its own entity, as it is kind of a slow-motion flow of dream-like vignettes that bubble up and dissipate for almost an hour (the album is just a single long-form piece). I have mixed feelings about that structure, as it feels quite amorphous and the classical music samples seem to do most of the heavy lifting. That latter part is probably not intentional, but I am sure that the shapeless, drifting structure was very much by design. Such an aesthetic has some inherent shortcomings, however—most notably, there is little on Zauberberg that stands out as particularly memorable or inspired besides the many classical music samples. 

Nevertheless, it works quite well as literal “ambient’ music, softening the edges of reality and imbuing my otherwise mundane surroundings with a pleasant atmosphere of hallucinatory melancholy. If that was all Zauberberg offered, however, it could easily be replaced by simply opening my windows and quietly playing “Swan Lake” with a lot of reverb added. Fortunately, the final third of the album gets quite a bit more compelling and justifies the album’s existence, as murky, haunted-sounding drones unexpectedly give way to much more aggressively processed classical music snippets. That textural change is very effective, as the piece suddenly feels more grainy, hissing and present. Even more effective is the ambiguous closing finale of distantly booming and popping fireworks (or possibly World War I) and the final chilling and ghostly howls as the piece fades away.

Notably, I have listened to this album at least a dozen times now and I am still having difficulty forming a solid opinion, as there are different facets pulling me in different directions. I certainly wanted to like Zauberberg more than I do, as it has a great premise that seems tailor-made for my personal delight and I have enjoyed much previous work from both Mathieu and Jaeger. Also, I loved the hazy sadness that pervades the many classical music interludes: whoever was tasked with manipulating their textures did an impressively effective job. More significantly, the final few minutes are absolutely beautiful—the trio pulled quite a wonderful rabbit out of their collective hat with that crescendo of sad fireworks. 

Unfortunately, however, Zauberberg is just too diffuse to offer a satisfying arc, as any sense of momentum dissipates into frequent lulls and moments of seeming barely there at all. Also, the combined powers of three talented experimental musicians should not result in me thinking mostly about Tchaikovsky instead. It is as if Jaeger, Mathieu, and Rabelais had nearly everything in place for an absolutely perfect and sublime album except for just one or two very crucial elements. As such, Zauberberg is ultimately a good (or even very good) album that shows exasperating flashes of what could have been a masterpiece. I suspect many other people will appreciate it more than I did though, as my perception was unavoidably colored by my (perhaps unreasonably) high expectations.

Listen here.